Peter Dickinson - Death of a Unicorn

Table of Contents

Cheadle 22 October, 1983.

PART ONE 1952–1953

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

PART TWO 1982–1983

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

Reading Group Discussion Questions by Jenny Terpsichore Abeles

About the Author

DEATH OF

A UNICORN

PETER

DICKINSON

Small Beer Press

Easthampton, MA

By the Same Author

Skin Deep

The Old English Peep Show

The Seals

Sleep and His Brother

The Lizard in the Cup

The Green Gene

The Poison Oracle*

The Lively Dead

King and Joker

Walking Dead

One Foot in the Grave

A Summer in the Twenties

The Last Houseparty

Hindsight

Tefuga

Skeleton-in-Waiting

Perfect Gallows

Play Dead

The Yellow Room Conspiracy

Some Deaths Before Dying

Children’s Books

The Weathermonger

Heartsease

The Devil’s Children

Emma Tuppers Diary

The Dancing Bear*

The Gift

The Blue Hawk

Annerton Pit

The Flight of Dragons

Tulku

City of Gold

The Seventh Raven*

Healer

Eva

Merlin Dreams

AK

A Bone from a Dry Sea

Shadow of a Hero

The Kin

Touch and Go

The Lion Tamer’s Daughter

The Ropemaker

The Tears of the Salamander

The Gift Boat

Angel Isle

Earth and Air*

Picture Books

The Iron Lion

Hepzibah

Giant Cold

A Box of Nothing

Mole Hole

Time and the Clock Mice, Etcetera

Chuck and Danielle

*Available or forthcoming from Small Beer Press.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed

in this book are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

Death of a Unicorn copyright © 1984 by Peter Dickinson (peterdickinson.com). All rights reserved. First published in the UK by the Bodley Head Ltd., London.

First Small Beer Press edition published in 2013.

Death of a Unicorn reading group discussion questions copyright © 2013 Small Beer Press. All rights reserved.

The Unicorn Leaps across a Stream. The Hunt of the Unicorn. ca. 1495-1505. Wool warp, wool, silk, silver, and gilt wefts. 12 ft. 1 in. x 14 ft. (368.3 x 426.7 cm). Gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1937 (37.80.3). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, U.S.A. Photo Credit: Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.

Small Beer Press

150 Pleasant Street #306

Easthampton, MA 01027

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Distributed to the trade by Consortium.

ISBN: 9781618730404 | ebook: 9781618730411.

First edition 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Original edition Library of Congress—Cataloging in Publication Data

Dickinson, Peter, 1927—Death of a unicorn.

I. Title.

PR6054.135D4 1984 823’.914 84-42700

ISBN 0-394-53947-8

0-394-74100-5 (pbk)

Text set in Minion.

Paper edition printed on 50# Natures Natural 30% PCR Recycled Paper in the USA.

Cheadle

22 October, 1983.

My dear Fiona,

I do not yet know whether I shall leave this manuscript for you to find, or whether it will be you I shall leave it for. We are a long-lived family, and a lot may yet happen in both our lives. But assuming I do, and it is you, I think you may find it easier to understand if I tell you how it came into existence.

It was written in two stages, the first almost thirty years before the second. In the summer of 1953 I had an absolute need to get the events of the previous ten months out of my system so that I could start creating some sort of a life for myself again. So I wrote the first part of this manuscript, put it in the bottom of a drawer, and let other unwanted papers accumulate on top of it.

Last year, partly as a result of your coming to stay at Cheadle, I found I needed to reconsider the details of those ten months, so I got the old manuscript out and read it through. It struck me, doing so, that I might show it to you to help you in the decision I was hoping you would make, but then, as more old history came to light, I discovered something which meant that it would be extremely unfair on my part to use it in an attempt to influence you. You will see why when you read it.

What I discovered was a considerable shock, though very different from the simple, primitive event I believed I was coping with in 1953. Besides, I had been a simple, primitive person then, and am no longer. But it still seemed necessary to use the same old simple magic. Write it out. Put it in a drawer. Bury it. Only this time for you (perhaps) to find.

I have been unable to refrain from adding a few modern footnotes to the older part of the manuscript, for instance where the gulf of time struck me most forcibly. I would not dare do this in my other books, for fear of irritating my readers, but here I have no one to please but myself.

And you. I mean this. I take great pleasure in pleasing you, so if you do read it, read it for pleasure, my dear.

Your loving aunt, M M

PART ONE

1952–1953

I

It began with a yawn.

I knew Mummy could see me, though she was pretending to listen to Lady Fosse, so I made a meal of it. I raised my hand, white-gloved to the elbow, just far enough for the tip of my middle finger to reach my mouth and yawned like a waking cat.

‘Bored already?’ said a man’s voice beside me.

I was standing at the bottom of the stairs in Fenella’s uncle’s house, waiting for Jane and Penny to emerge from the cloak-room. Penny was wearing an off-the-shoulder dress which had been made for me two years ago, when I’d had a lot of puppy-fat. It was supposed to have been altered by one of Mummy’s little women, but as Penny had been taking off her coat it had suddenly become obvious that the alterations hadn’t been drastic enough. Mummy had given Jane the sacred ring of safety-pins she always took to dances and told her to do something, and we would wait for them at the bottom of the stairs. So the rest of our party had to wait too. Other people I knew and half-knew—Dickies and Susans and Cordelias and Lizzies and Pauls and Tommies and Henriettas—trudged past us up the stairs and I exchanged wide-eyed glances with the girls and little smiles with the men. Signals. We be of one blood, thou and I. Our party was a bit of an obstruction, especially after Mummy had trapped Lady Fosse in order to give herself a reason for hanging around there. She was watching me because she knew I was in a bolshie mood. She’d always been good at that, totally unsympathetic but totally aware. Would I ever, I wondered, be able to look at her without a rubbery little knot suddenly tightening in my stomach?[1] As a kind of counter-magic I produced the yawn, and the voice, summoned by my spell, spoke at my elbow. I turned.

It was a frog prince. No, not really. In fact it was obviously somebody’s father, a hideous little man, shorter than I was but broad-shouldered. Glossy brown skin, too smooth to be the remains of a ski-tan. Almost bald. A bit pop-eyed. A wide mouth like a toad’s.